Perspective

I took the opportunity to venture into DC on a hot, sweltering day last month (as opposed to the hot sweltering days of this month…whew!) to see an exhibit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.  Entitled “She Who Tells a Story: Women Photographers from Iran and the Arab World” it was an interesting and thought-provoking exhibit.  There were several that substantially caught my eye, but one in particular made me think about this blog.

I don’t typically invite a reader into the blog itself, but in this case I want to.  I want you to look at the picture, and decide what you see and what you think before reading further.

 

I can wait.  Take your time and look at it.  What is your reaction to it?  What do you think of her, about what she’s saying?

I sat on the divan in the exhibit hall and thought about it, thought about what the photographer wanted to say, thought of the different ways the picture could be interpreted, the different ways of seeing it.

***********************************************************

She is desecrating the American flag by using it as her head covering, treating the symbol of our country like a piece of clothing.  It shows the disregard she has for America, the contempt with which the Muslims view us.  To them it is nothing more than a scrap of fabric that they are using to repress and oppress their own people while thumbing their nose at the US at the same time.

***********************************************************

She wears the flag as hajib to honor the flag, to show her love for her new country that allows her to express her faith.  A country that allows her to wear a hajib or not, to not be forced into a bur qua and silenced. She wears it to grant it great honor as a piece of her faith that is now linked to her new country.

***********************************************************

There is a wonderful contrast in color and brightness between the dark background and the colorfully highlighted complexion of the girl.  The drape of the cloth emphasizes that color as well as the shifting the shape of her face and making it more angular.

***********************************************************

Which did you see?

It’s interesting because we frequently see what either we want to see, or what we expect to see.  If you  see animus with a type of people, with a different faith, if you have a view of them vs. us, then that is what you see; the first view rings true.  If you see the harmony of people, the acceptance of faiths (or lack there-of), the inclusion of others into a melting pot of integration and connection, then that is what you see; the second view.  You might even view it outside of the political/religious framework, as purely art with texture, composition, color and shading.

Which did you see?  Which can you see now?

I admit I saw the third view first. I saw it as art.  It was then that I realized how many people would view it like the first view, as dishonorable, and how sad I felt for them that such a beautiful woman, such a beautiful shot, should be abused by some that way.  And then it dawned on me that there was yet another way of viewing it, as honoring God and Country in the second view.  Later I learned that my thought process was exactly what the photographer was attempting; it came to me without having read any of the material about the series.  She did a stellar job, given that a left brained engineer saw it and wondered the questions she wanted me to wonder, moved me to see the differences.

I hope they move you, too.

 

 

The picture was done by Boushra Almutawakel , a Yemeni, in response to the terrorist events of September 11, 2001. 

 

Murdered….unacceptable

The last couple of days have been an incredible roller coaster of news, reaction and emotion.  Even for someone who is normally even-keeled and calm about events (except for Fukushima, which scared the **** out of me) , I have found the last couple of days to be unsettling and unacceptable.

I’ve watched the video from Baton Rouge.  I’ve seen it in slow motion, freeze framed it.  I’ve listened to the sound track, watched the officers, watched the victim.  I’ve tried to put myself in the place of the responding officers, in the churn that occurs during a melee. I watched the struggle cause the car they up against to rock back and forth, watched two officers on top of the victim, watched the victim’s hand stretch out wide.  Watched the officer pull a gun and put it against the victim’s chest.  Watched the gaping, bloody wound and last gurgling gasp on the video. And tried to understand what I saw…

It was murder.

A stop due to a broken tail-light on a car in Minnesota with  a man still in the car, shot and killed as deliberately as the victim in Charleston SC running on foot from a stop for a burned out tail light.

And then Dallas.  Cold blooded, calculated, inexcusable, mass murder. Five police officers ambushed, targeted, murdered.

We are losing our collective minds as a civilized society.  Hate is winning.  Violence is winning.  Racism is winning.

There are no simple answers, no simple solutions. Not even close. NOT. EVEN. CLOSE. Everyone has to get out of their entrenched, dug-in, hardened, unyielding positions on race, police, guns.

Race– Whites do not understand the issues of DWB (driving while black), or of the looks given to any black boy, man-boy, or adult who doesn’t look like us.  They do not understand the inherent bias of much of society that exists despite a black President, Attorney General, former Secretary of State, governors, mayors, judges.  They do not understand disparity in wages, jobs, sentences, that occur when the person is white compared to black.

Blacks do not understand the issues of cultural isolation, thug-life, drug life, basis of stereotypes that they need to own up to and correct.  Blacks do not understand the impact of the double standard between the lack of outrage at black-on-black violence and white-on-black.  They do not understand the impact of calling your homie a nigga when a white is called out on it.  They do not understand that they have a role to play in educating all of society in a civilized way of the issues faced.

Police – The vast, vast majority of police are tremendous, outstanding, public servants.  They give of themselves, down to the last breath of life, protecting the people, the society that we live in – that we ALL live in.  Without them it would truly be a wild west, with the anarchy and bloodshed that exists in the failed country-states of South and Central America, horn of Africa, and Mideast.

Too often they are killed by idiots, thugs and punks in situations where no normal person would expect it…at a restaurant in Hartford County, coming out of the station in Prince George’s County, sitting in a squad car in New York City. At a march in Dallas.  These deaths are unacceptable, indefensible.

The police need to understand that the rule of silence can no longer be tolerated, that those who are racist, violence-loving, power-tripping or just not competent and skilled enough at their job need to be reported, redirected, retrained or removed.  They are not just a blight, they are a massive cancer because the few are truly destroying the reputation of the many.

Guns – We need to end the love affair with guns that is romanticized in movies and music videos.  They aren’t cool, they aren’t hip, they aren’t acceptable except in some specific realms of sport and hunting.  We need to recognize that there is something between banning everything and allowing everything.  More people with them isn’t the answer.  Louisiana is an open carry state, and nothing was done to see if Alton Stirling was legally carrying. Philando Castile had a permit to carry in an open carry state, but was shot dead anyway.  More people carrying guns will cause more problems for the police, and lead to more deaths of innocent people (whether they are totally innocent or innocent of anything close to a capital crime)

I don’t know what the answer is.  But we damn sight need to start working on it.  Why isn’t every police organization in the country revisiting officer training for confronting suspects?  Why isn’t the NRA helping fund officer training for dealing with confrontational situations? Why aren’t the vocal police critics in the film and music industries funding body cameras for major departments?  Why aren’t politicians standing up to the one-issue megaphones who only want to blame police, guns, blacks, whites, etc. How can we get past the them-against-us mentality that keeps us entrenched in our bunker positions?

I need to stop, think, and find my own way to engage with my community (which is very racially diverse but separated), my police, and my government. Even if it is as small a first step as speaking to those of a different race that I pass on my walks. We all need to do something.  We need to stop feeding the fires, and start finding solutions.

Or we will lose civilization.

 

 

 

4th and 7

No, this isn’t a football story, although that was clearly in my mind when I came up with the title 🙂 Rather, this is about two things that I wanted to comment on today.

from http://dc.about.com/od/specialevents/a/4thofJuly.htm

First, despite the issues of my regular blogging spot being shut down for renovations, the month of June was exceptionally productive for me as a blogger.  Seven posts, including four that were my thoughts (along with two reblogs and one smile inducing picture set).  Not bad for being out of my routine!

Second, Happy 4th of July.  This country has gone through an awful lot recently –terrorism, politics, unrest, malaise (I dislike the word, but it does work).  We will likely go through a lot more.  And yet, we have survived for 240 years against all odds and enemies, foreign and domestic.  This is still the place to where everyone wants to come (which is its own problem).  Despite this, we persevere.  We have fought long odds, we have fought terrible ideologies and ideologues and demigods.  And will continue to.  But for now, let us realize the good and positive that we still are and still have, and focus on expanding and continuing it. For ourselves and others.

Happy 4th of July.

from https://plus.google.com/117077191734976938755

 

 

Brexit’s Two Warnings

The vote has been cast, like a massive stone in the world’s pool. Waves and ripples flow in all directions, affecting parts of life we haven’t even realized yet. As America continues down its own election process, it struck me immediately that there were two major lessons we need to realize and contemplate:

Photo by illustration by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images, from IBTimes.com

1.  It can happen here. The same forces of turning inward and away from international connection are available here. The same fear of immigration and refugees. The same desire to focus everything inward. The same concerns about borders and terrorism. The same mindset that there is too much change, too much of our control, and the resulting desire to pull more into our sphere of control. The election campaign started with almost no one believing that Trump would win the Republican nomination, much as few believed the UK would leave the EU. Even as time marched relentlessly forward there was still a wide sense of confidence that it wouldn’t happen.  But it did.  It did in the Brexit vote, it did in the Trump nomination process.  The next leap, to Presidency, is not as implausible a leap as it seemed a year ago.

The demographics of the UK vote look alarmingly like the last election votes.  Cities going one way, rural lands going the other.  In the UK, the in-country split even puts “Stay” N. Ireland and Scotland on a noticeably different path than “Leave” England and Wales….excluding the population powerhouse of London which voted “Stay”.  Our own red-blue map shows an alarmingly similar split between the population centers and the more suburban and rural areas. The dynamics are, unsurprisingly(?), similar.

2. We have no reset. It is interesting to see how many people are suffering from voters remorse.  How many interviews have I seen of people who said they only wanted to protest with their vote, they didn’t really think the UK would leave the EU.  They wanted to express their dislike of the current situation, to thumb their noses at the political establishment. But actually leave? Actually jettison the continent? That wasn’t on their thought screen. Until …. it actually happened.  The petitions to reject the referendum results started almost immediately, garnering millions within a day.  And this for a process that requires (as I understand it) multiple additional petitions, laws and changes before the exit can actually occur.  The protest vote became too real, apparently.

We won’t have that option.  The presidential vote we cast will govern us for the next 4 years at a minimum. We won’t have the luxury of a mulligan, a do-over, a “oh, I didn’t really mean that”.  When we vote, it will be for all the marbles. No additional legislation to be passed, no two year ease-out-of-it process.  It will be for four years. It will be for keepsies.

I hope we think carefully what we are going to do in the next few months.  I hope we don’t vote emotions, vote knee-jerk, vote protest and change for the sake of protest and change.  The consequences, the almost immediate remorse felt by so many in the UK who voted based on change and message and not actual outcome, needs to be a lesson.

I hope we heed it.

No Food, No Teachers, Violence in Failing Venezuela Schools — AP Images Blog

Photos by Ariana Cubillos Maria Arias slipped her notebooks into her backpack, scrounged for a banana to share with her brother and sister, and set off for high school through narrow streets so violent taxis will not come here for any price.

via No Food, No Teachers, Violence in Failing Venezuela Schools — AP Images Blog

Not simply….

Another day.  Another city.  Another targeted group.

And the discussion of why kicks into full gear before the bodies are even removed and identified.  When will we finally get it?  Like every other attack we’ve seen and every other horror, it’s ….

…not simply Islam.  Yes, he was Muslim.   But I’ve heard (and read) of Christian and Jewish and Buddhist hate-filled attacks against similar people. And the right-wing madman in Norway wasn’t Muslim, he was Christian. Yes, there are radicalized Muslims. And reactionary Christians. And extremist Jews.  But there millions of Muslims, Christians, and others who aren’t radicals and who just want to live their life.

….not simply homophobia.  Yes, it was a gay nightclub.  And for the madman there was apparently a particular reaction to homosexuality.  In the last couple of years, starting with the whole issue of Bruce Jenner becoming Caitlyn and trans-rights and bathroom wars there has been a greater awareness of gender politics, and a tremendous amount of hatred directed at it.  It has brought the whole sexual difference issue to the forefront of people who weren’t paying attention to it before.  Hate and violence crosses religious boundaries.  But it was a soft target, the kind that a cowardly lone wolf could attack; soft like a school or a company picnic or a temple.

…not simply guns.  Yes, a gun was used. It could have been fertilizer and a bomb.  It could have been a car into a crowd.  The weapon could have been any number of things. That a gun was used isn’t so much an issue as the type of gun, where the technology an automatic weapon makes the outcomes of events so much more horrific.

…not simply a terrorist event.  Yes, it was, a horrific one.  But we’ve seen them before and sadly we will see them again.  We need to discuss resiliency, to practice it. We need to pay attention, to engage with the world around us. We need to know ways out, ways to protect ourselves.  We can’t stop everything, but we as individuals need to take responsibility for looking out for ourselves. People die in nightclub fires because they can’t figure out where they are and how to get out.

….not simply hatred.  Yes, it is hatred. That has existed since time immemorial.  Look up Loeb-Leopold.  People have always hated.  But somehow we (and that’s not just the USA but the whole globe) have gotten the idea that violence is the solution, that uncompromising insistence on our personal views is somehow the only solution. Maybe it’s due to our internet connectivity, the ability to bring everything to us at all times.

When we seek the simple answer (religion, gender, weapon, opportunity) and the simple solution (control of any one thing) we shortchange everything, and lose the opportunity to discuss the complicated.  While Hercules could slice the Gordian Knot, no other tangled thread of events can be handled like that.

We need to realize that.  And start working on that.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/pulse-orlando-nightclub-shooting/victims/os-pictures-worldwide-support-orlando-nightclub-shooting-20160612-photogallery.html

 

Shenandoah– A story unfolded

One of he great things about the Howard County Library system (and there are many!) is their series of author presentations. I’ve been to probably 6 or 8 over the past three years, and have enjoyed each one as I learned something new and mind-engaging. In this case, I just finished the book from the January Meet the Author. The book was Shenandoah: A Story of Conservation and Betrayal by Sue Eisenfeld.

The book is really two stories intertwined like DNA double helix.  The first story is the transformation of a Philadelphia city girl into an avid hiker (a romantic relationship helps this 🙂 ).  Moreover, she and her husband are bushwhackers, people who leave the marked trails and head out into the massive amounts of back country available in the mountains.  What she discovers during these expeditions are parts and pieces of society that she didn’t expect to find.  They were the remnants of the materials, homes and lives of the hill country people who were displaced, sometimes forcibly, by the government from the Park.

It turns out that the hills and valleys that form the Shenandoah National Park had been home to scores of  communities.  Some of these families and communities had been living on the land for two hundred years or more.  They had found livelihoods by farming, orchards, stills, lumber, tanning and more.  They had homes with foundations, walls, fireplaces and mantels.  Churches, schools, stores, mills.  And they did not want to leave when the Commonwealth of Virginia came calling at the behest of the Federal Government to remove them from the land.  But removed they were under a grossly misapplied effort of eminent domain.

What I found most amazing in this story was the vilification of the people.  Do you remember L’il Abner?  As part of the effort to gain support for the park, a sociologist went to the area and wrote a book Hollow Folk about the people.  The people and communities were portrayed as burdened with poverty and inbreeding.  Children illiterate about the Pledge of Allegiance or the Lord’s Prayer, barefoot and savage.  They were all lies, but became part of the story of the park as that (now discredited) book contributed to the eviction process.

from http://www.deniskitchen.com/docs/bios/bio_capp_characters.html

The book was an enjoyable, informative, entertaining read.  My regret is that it left me with unscratched itches…wanting to know more about the demise of the chestnut forests, the loss of varieties of apples, how communities functioned and even flourished in those times.  Sadly, Sue indicated that she wasn’t planning to follow-up on the topics.  It would have been interesting too, to have a little information of how this couldn’t happen today. Or could it?  The recent award of the Goldman Prize to a student activist for stopping the proposed incinerator in Curtis Bay shows that while we may decry the past, we haven’t necessarily advanced past it.  Still, the Shenandoah story made for a good read and lots of opportunities for contemplative thought.

 

#HoCoBlogs

A Modest Proposal….for Foreign Policy

The world has become such a scary place.  There are so many issues and challenges in the world these days., and there are so many people screaming solutions about this problem or that. The threat of ISIS.  Climate change.  Refugees in Europe.  A nuclear Iran.  Economic lethargy. Lack of education, lack of jobs, lack of political leadership and will.

It struck me the other day as I was thinking about history,and pondering the world and the issues in it that perhaps there was a modest proposal that, much like Johnathan Swift did, like Hercules and the Gordian Knot, could cut through a variety of issues and solve many in a cohesive way.

http://gizmodo.com/why-nuclear-bombs-create-mushroom-clouds-1468107869

The start of the solution would be to launch a massive nuclear strike against the Mideast… yes, the whole of the Middle East!!  Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, the whole lot.  Such a strike would eliminate several issues at once and provide some wonderful solutions to our most challenging and perplexing problems!

First, rather than spending money to refurbish our aging nuclear weapons, we could just use them and then build entirely new ones!  Think of the efficiency of it!! The new ones would require building a lot of infrastructure, as our current enrichment and fabrication facilities have grown dilapidated and antiquated.  This would be a tremendous boon in jobs program in this country, both for manufacturing the infrastructure upgrades as well as uranium mining.  Jobs! Yes, jobs!  Lots and lots of jobs!!

On top of that, this would give education a widespread boost because we would need new scientists to run the plants, as well as trained craftsmen to make the equipment in them.  The entire educational process boosted with a single stroke! Of course, we’d need to import a lot of trained scientists because we’ve let our academic science programs deteriorate, but this would be a short term need, or just bring the retired technicians and scientists out of retirement to do the work….which would eliminate the problems with Social Security funding!

Retired scientist Dr. Strangelove coming out of retirement to assist in the educational process

Second, it would eliminate lots and lots of threats, like ISIS, refugees and nuclear Iran.  The wide geographical area held by ISIS would require a lot of weapons, but we have a lot and it would only mean we’d need to make even more from our new plants (see above)!!! Smart, very smart!  Despite their location, the Iranian facilities in Ishahan, Natanz, Bushehr, and the rest could be taken out and forever end the possibility of a nuclear armed Iranian theocracy.  Yes, in both cases there might be millions and millions of people lost, cities destroyed, the birthplace of civilization reduced to glass….but what’s that in comparison to relative calm and stability that would result!

The debate on anthropomorphic climate change would be rendered totally moot!  The amount of debris in the atmosphere, the change in albedo, the increase in clouds would all eliminate any doubt.  And the great thing is that whether the planet got colder or warmer, we would be able to rely on our own sources of coal and gas to keep us comfortable!!

Another great point….No more foreign oil! Drill baby drill!! We’d be back as Number 1 again.  That pipeline the Canadians want to build through the country? It’d be greenlighted so fast it would make their heads spin.  More jobs!  Good jobs! Appalachia could come back with their coal reserves that we could sell to the rest of the world so the countries that would still talk to us could stay warm.  With all that coal and oil being burned, it wouldn’t even be necessary to install expensive pollution control devices, because what we’d be putting into the atmosphere would be minimal compared to results of thousands of nuclear weapons going off!   Solar never was very good, and with the increased debris and cloud cover no one would ever talk about it again!

We could even use this as an opportunity to win new friends in the world!  Imagine how happy Russia would be to be able to use nuclear weapons in the Caucasus’, or China against the far western provinces!  We could even finally become real friends with India by helping them eliminate Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Think how much better the BRIC countries relationship would be with us!! (Okay, Brazil isn’t getting anything out of this, but they’re not a real issue anyway).

All of this could eliminate the refugee problem as well!  First, by eliminating the population centers, it decreases tremendously the number of people escaping war.  There’d be no more war!!  Yes, there’d be a lot of radiation, but that’s a good reason to keep people out of your borders anyway.  The ones that are already out we won’t have to deal with because the rising sea levels brought about by climate change and melting of the polar ice caps would flood out the refugee hotbeds in Europe!  Staging grounds in the Mediterranean would disappear!  Yes, it might mean losing a lot of small friendly countries like England, Holland, Denmark, Greece, Belgium,  but again, you have to think of the greater benefit of the actions!  We’d lose some prime land in New York and Miami as well (New Orleans would certainly disappear) but there are some savvy real estate moguls who  could certainly help build new cities along the new coast!  And that would bring more jobs! Even enough jobs for the immigrants already here to turn them into productive members of society!

Of course,there would be nay-sayers and losers who would boo-hoo over the cost.  Lost art, culture, civilization, cities, countries, millions and millions and millions of people.  Our own identity, some would argue, would also be lost but those would be the few who don’t remember their history of Manifest Destiny, or how we managed the native population here.  It would still leave us with figuring out what to do with the southern border of the country, but we could certainly use a new radioactive waste disposal area.

So many issues, so many problems solved with a single game-changing concept!!  It’s such a great idea I’m surprised no one has come up with it before!!

Really?

Satire.  Farce.  Gross stupidity.  The point of this is….I’m not sure.   Swift’s point was to lampoon the ideas and the society by putting out a concept that was so abhorrent that no one would take it seriously. I’m tired of people espousing simple solutions (bomb ISIS, bomb Iran, send troops to Syria) or just dismissing the problem (climate change, refugees, societal change) when these are all highly complex and interwoven problems.  There are no simple solutions.  I repeat, there are no simple solutions, only lingering problems and new problems.  Let’s pick one case in point –bombing Iran.  Bombing Iran to eliminate the nuclear facilities brings a ground war (in Iran, in Saudi Arabia, in Israel, somewhere there) with a fairly well-developed country that has a history of asymmetrical thinking and a distinctly non-Western thought process. It’s a war a long ways away, in a challenging climate, with no friends around.  It would be a war that we would have to win by annihilation lest we leave an embittered, implacable enemy behind like a crop of weeds waiting to sprout in the soil, and you can’t kill all the seeds, ever.  It would ruin relationships with West and East, as we assume the bully mantle…only without the people, resources and resolution to fight the fight for as long as the fight is needed.  And, as always, with no thought of an exit strategy or how we fill the void we leave behind.

Everything is a Gordian Knot. It’d be useful if we started thinking about all the threads and considering their impacts. Then maybe we could find a real solution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NY, Madrid, London, Ankara, Beirut, Paris….Brussels

New York 9/11/2001, Madrid 4/11/2004, London 7/7/2005, Ankara 10/11/2015, Beirut 11/12/2015, Paris 13/11/2015…..and now Brussels.

 

Sadly, horrifically, the assaults go on.

Walled Off

I have been driving the section of Rt 29 through Columbia for years…decades, actually. And I’ve seen the changes over that time.  I remember driving it when I was in college, going up to Westminster to see my girlfriend Sari.  I remember driving it when I graduated from grad school, and took my first job in Columbia, thinking that I had traveled out into the boonies!  I’ve seen it change as the signalized at-grade intersections were eliminated to accommodate traffic flow (I have bad memories of the old left turn onto Owen Brown, where I had a battery problem and needed a push once day !)

Now I see that there are sound barriers going up and ….I realize it means that the view of Columbia, at least of the communities along the way, will be gone. Last year they gutted the wonderful stands of forsythia that had stood in the median south of Owen Brown, and most of the trees that were around the section at old South Entrance Road.  I hope that there will still be the view of the lake, but the other views will now be of pre-cast textured concrete walls.  No longer will the condos just north of the footbridge be visible.  Nor the old 1960’s era houses south of the footbridge.

I understand their aversion to the traffic noise.  Most assuredly, if I lived there I’d want sound barriers too. It’s just that it seems like there is something that is lost, something connective in the scenery that we pass.  What was connection, or at least noticing, the communities passed through and the history passed through, now becomes another developmental block of featureless nothing.  Where once we saw where others were, what else there was around us, and realized the differences, now we see nothing of the areas we go through.

There is a part of me that says if we HAVE to have these walls, couldn’t we at least green them up?  And I don’t mean wait for two decades for the ivy to eventually start to grow and get a foothold.  I mean intentionally plant not just at the base of the walls, but build into the wall repositories of dirt that would allow flowers or grasses or vines to grow.  Green walls are not new, nor are they even cutting edge.  Couldn’t we at least improve what we seem condemned to live with?

http://tournesolsiteworks.com/wordpress/index.php/tag/living-wall/

http://www.abg-geosynthetics.com/retaining-walls.html

Sigh.  Time rolls on.

 

#HoCoBlogs